Academic courses on interculturality have become a rapidly growing discipline in the West, where supranational bodies such as the European Union and UNESCO promote intercultural education as a path towards improved global cultural relations. Through interviews with students who completed a university course on interculturality, this essay investigates the tenets of interculturality and problematises whether this discourse merely reproduces a classificatory logic embedded in modernity that insists on differences among cultures. The argument put forward is that in the analysed context, interculturality tends to reproduce the very colonial ideas that it seeks to oppose. In doing so, interculturality reinforces the collective ‘we’ as the location of modernity by deciding who is culturally different and who is in a position that must be bridged to the mainstream by engaging in intercultural dialogue.

This essay seeks to wean interculturality from its comfort zone of flat substitutability across cultural differences by pushing for the possibility of other ways of thinking about the concept depending on where (the geopolitics of knowledge) and by whom (the bodypolitics of knowledge) it is being articulated. In order to make a case for the importance of always considering the geopolitical and bodypolitical dimension of knowledge production within interculturality, this essay shifts focus away from policies of the European Union and UNESCO to the Andean region of Latin America. In that part of the world the notion of interculturalidad – translation: interculturality – is not only a subject on the educational agenda, it has also become a core component among indigenous social movements in their push for decolonization. With reference points drawn from a decolonial perspective and the concept of “colonial difference”, this essay makes the case that interculturalidad, with its roots in the historical experience of colonialism and in the particular, rather than in assertions of universality, offers another perspective on interculturality bringing into the picture other epistemologies. It concludes by arguing for the requirement to start seeing interculturality as inter-epistemic rather than simply inter-cultural.

The present article focuses on problematizing the European Union’s claim that intercultural dialogue constitutes an advocated method of talking through cultural boundaries based on mutual empathy and non-domination. More precisely, the aim is to analyze who is being constructed as counterparts of the intercultural dialogue through the discourse produced by the EU. To answer the question, European policy documents on intercultural dialogue are analyzed drawing on a postcolonial perspective. As an interpretation, the EU appropriates historical symbols and colonial figures of thought to authorize its current objectives. Within the realm of the EU, Europeans are portrayed as having an a priori historical existence, while the ones excluded from this notion are evoked to demonstrate its difference in comparison to the European one. The results show that subjects not considered as Europeans serve as markers of the multicultural present of the space. Thus, intercultural dialogue seems to consolidate differences between European and Other - the ‘We’ and ‘Them’ in the dialogue - rather than, as in line with its purpose, bringing subjects together.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the indigenous people and the culture in Latin America is represented in Swedish high school schoolbooks in comparison with their equals in Colombia. The aim is to discover whether there are any differences or similarities between the reproductions in both countries. The theoretical part discusses the difficulties involved to determine both a Latin-American identity as well as a Colombian one. This is due to the fact that identity in Latin America is a product of colonization, which is to say that it came into being through the people who conquered the region because, prior to their arrival, Latin America didn’t exist as we know it. Multiculturalism within the region complicates this construction since different groups and nations construct their memory and ‘wear’ these concepts from which they get their proper sense of the past in function with the present and how it aspires to identify itself with the future. This means that not just one Latin America exists, but many. Part of the problem is, according to some scholars (cf. Díaz Geniz 2004), Latin Americans desire to identify themselves with the ‘other’, meaning the white, the European or the North American. The study concludes that there exists a European point of view in the books of both countries in their way of representing the history of the region.

At the centre of Decolonising Intercultural Education is a simple yet fundamental question: is it possible to learn from the Other? This book argues that many recent efforts to theorise interculturality restrict themselves to a variety of interpretations within a Western framework of knowledge, which does not necessarily account for the epistemological diversity of the world.

The book suggests an alternative definition of interculturality, framed not in terms of cultural differences, but in terms of colonial difference. It brings analysis of the Latin American concept of interculturalidad into the picture and explores the possibility of decentring the discourse of interculturality and its Eurocentric outlook, seeing interculturality as inter-epistemic rather than simply inter-cultural.

Decolonising Intercultural Education will be of interest to educational practitioners, researchers and postgraduate students in in the areas of education, postcolonial studies, Latin American studies and social sciences.

The thrust of this essay is to study how interculturality, as a path to decolonization, is being articulated and understood among indigenous alliances in the Andean region of Latin America. Empirically, the analysis is based upon interviews with students and teachers from local academic courses on interculturality in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Although interculturality and intercultural education are common features also in Western educational rhetoric, the imposition to learn from indigenous movements have failed to attract any substantial interest in the West (cf. Deere & Leon 2003; Patrinos 2000). To illustrate this further, Robert Young (2012) argues that indigenous struggles seldom are regarded as a central issue even within postcolonial studies, a disjunction related to the use among indigenous movements of paradigms not easily translated to the Western theories and presuppositions commonly used in this scholarship (Young 2012). Given this picture, there are strong reasons for engaging seriously in a discussion about the proposition for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernity, progress, salvation – as it lingers on in official memory; and there are also good reasons to problematize the universalizing claims that have characterized Western philosophy in the implicitly assumed epistemological hierarchies.

In this paper, I will focus specifically on visions of decolonization in terms of retrieved languages, reinscribed histories, production of knowledge; beginning the essay with an elaboration of the logic of domination as rooted in the modern/colonial world – here referred to as coloniality. Shortly thereafter, with reference points drawn from the work of Walter Mignolo and his notion of delinking, I introduce the theoretical backdrop that guides my analysis. In the major part of the paper, I develop an argument for interculturality to be understood as inter-epistemic based on knowledge produced beyond the discursive order of Western educational systems.

If the production of knowledge in Latin America has long been subject to imperial designs and disseminated through educational systems, recent interventions —from liberation theology, popular education, participatory action research, alternative communication and critical literacy to postcolonial critique and decolonial options—have sought to shift the geography of reason. The central question to be addressed is how, in times of historical ruptures, political reconstructions and epistemic formations, the production of paradigms rooted in ‘other’ logics, cosmologies and realities may renegotiate and redefine concepts of education, learning and knowledge.

In this article we compare how the native population of Latin America and their culture is represented in History schoolbooks both in Sweden and in Colombia. The aim was to find out if there are differences and similarities in the reproduction of the native community in both countries. The study shows that Colombian schoolbooks give information more thoroughly, describing and explaining the facts, however, both countries consistently show the trend to represent the natives as being different and inferior, especially when describing their way of living and their knowledge. We find explanations about what they owned and what they did not own, what they knew and did not know, all focused from a Eurocentric perspective.

The present article focuses on problematizing the European Union’s claim that intercultural dialogue cons- titutes an advocated method of talking through cultural boundaries based on mutual empathy and non-do- mination. More precisely, the aim is to analyze who is being constructed as counterparts of the intercultural dialogue through the discourse produced by the EU. To answer the question, European policy documents on intercultural dialogue are analyzed drawing on a postcolonial perspective. As an interpretation, the EU appropriates historical symbols and colonial figures of thought to authorize its current objectives. Within the realm of the EU, Europeans are portrayed as having an a priori historical existence, while the ones excluded from this notion are evoked to demonstrate its difference in comparison to the European one. The results show that subjects not considered as Europeans serve as markers of the multicultural present of the space. Thus, intercultural dialogue seems to consolidate differences between European and Other – the ‘We’ and ‘Them’ in the dialogue – rather than, as in line with its purpose, bringing subjects together.

In this article we compare how ‘slavery’, among Indian population during the colonization in Latin America, is represented in History schoolbooks both in Sweden and in Colombia. The aim of the subject is an intent to point out similarities and differences in the reproduction in both countries. The study shows that Colombian schoolbooks transmit more profound information and give more space to the facts. However, in the schoolbooks of both countries, the connection between the hard work burden which the slavery ment and the change for the worst of the immunsystem in the explinations of the diminishing of the Latin-American indigenous population.

An increasing number of educational policies, academic studies, and university courses today propagate ‘interculturality’ as a method for approaching ‘the Other’ and reconciling universal values and cultural specificities. Based on a thorough discussion of Europe’s colonial past and the hierarchies of knowledge that colonialism established, this dissertation interrogates the definitions of intercultural knowledge put forth by EU policy discourse, academic textbooks on interculturality, and students who have completed a university course on the subject. Taking a decolonial approach that makes its central concern the ways in which differences are formed and sustained through references to cultural identities, this study shows that interculturality, as defined in these texts, runs the risk of affirming a singular European outlook on the world, and of elevating this outlook into a universal law. Contrary to its selfproclaimed goal of learning from the Other, interculturality may in fact contribute to the repression of the Other by silencing those who are already muted. The dissertation suggests an alternative definition of interculturality, which is not framed in terms of cultural differences but in terms of colonial difference. This argument is substantiated by an analysis of the Latin American concept of interculturalidad, which derives from the struggles for public and political recognition among indigenous social movements in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. By bringing interculturalidad into the picture, with its roots in the particular and with strong reverberations of the historical experience of colonialism, this study explores the possibility of decentring the discourse of interculturality and its Eurocentric outlook. In this way, the dissertation argues that an emancipation from colonial legacies requires that we start seeing interculturality as inter-epistemic rather than simply inter-cultural.

Abstract [en]

The present essay focuses on problematizing the European Union’s claim that interculturaldialogue constitutes an advocated method of talking through cultural boundaries—inside as wellas outside the classroom—based on mutual empathy and non-domination. More precisely, theaim is to analyze who is being constructed as counterparts of the intercultural dialogue throughthe discourse produced by the EU in policies on education, culture and intercultural dialogue.Within the Union, Europeans are portrayed as having an a priori historical existence, whilethe ones excluded from this notion are evoked to demonstrate its difference in comparison to theEuropean one.The results show that subjects not considered as Europeans serve as markers of themulticultural present of the space. Thus, intercultural dialogue seems to consolidate differencesbetween European and Other—the‘We’ and ‘Them’ in the dialogue—rather than, as in line withits purpose, bringing subjects together.

Abstract [en]

This paper scrutinises the ways in which students who have completed a university course on interculturality distinguish between sameness and otherness in attempts to integrate, relate to and build a bridge to those deemed culturally different. It makes use of interviews to analyse the factors that shape the interpretation of otherness and difference in the students’ definitions of interculturality, as well as their statements about the relationships between us and them, and descriptions of instances of learning and teaching that have taken place between parties in different parts of the world. Theoretically, the paper is based on a postcolonial framework, highlighting the continuing influence of colonialism and Eurocentric ways of reasoning inside as well as outside the classroom in today’s society. One of the main conclusions of the paper is that in the process of transferring knowledge, there is a risk that the history of modern Europe will be sanctioned as the historical trajectory for the rest of the world to follow, with the accompanying supposition that this can only be made possible by extending a helping hand to the Other.

Aman, Robert

Abstract [en]

This essay explores the ways in which boundaries of estrangement are produced in the academic literature assigned for courses on interculturality. As the existence of interculturality is dependent on the ascription of content to culture, since the notion, by definition, always involves more than one singular culture, this essay seeks to provide an answer to the question of what this literature implicitly defines in terms of sameness vis-à-vis otherness and thereby chart the conditions for becoming intercultural. This question is especially important because theself in interculturality has to be, in principle, generalizable: it should be such that it signifies a position available for occupation by anybody with proper training in this approach. Starting from the assumption that different experiences, languages and identities, under the name of culture already intersect, and are contaminated by, one another, and are therefore already intercultural before being subjected to study under the auspices of ‘interculturality’ as an educational topic, the essay goes on toproblematize the way in which interculturality tends to construe sameness and difference along national lines and does little to cater for multiple, as opposed to national, or other unified, identities.

Abstract [en]

Interculturality is a notion that has come to dominate the debate on cultural diversity among supranational bodies such as the European Union and UNESCO in recent years. The EU goes so far as to identify interculturality as a key cultural and linguistic characteristic of a union which, it argues, acts as an inspiration to other parts of the world. At the same time, the very notion of interculturality is a core component of indigenous movements in the Andean region of Latin America in their struggles for decolonization. Every bit as contingent as any other concept, it is apparent that several translations of interculturality are simultaneously in play. Through interviews with students and teachers in a course on interculturality run by indigenous alliances, my aim in this essay is to study how the notion is translated in the socio-political context of the Andes. With reference points drawn from the works of Walter Mignolo and the concept of delinking, I will engage in a discussion about the potential for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernization, progress, salvation – that lingers on in official memory. Engagement in such an interchange of experiences, memories and significations provides not only recognition of other forms of subjectivity, knowledge systems and visions of the future but also a possible contribution to an understanding of how any attempt to invoke a universal reach for interculturality, as in the case of the EU and UNESCO, risks echoing the imperial order that the notion in another context attempts to overcome.

This paper scrutinises the ways in which students who have completed a university course on interculturality distinguish between sameness and otherness in attempts to integrate, relate to and build a bridge to those deemed culturally different. It makes use of interviews to analyse the factors that shape the interpretation of otherness and difference in the students’ definitions of interculturality, as well as their statements about the relationships between us and them, and descriptions of instances of learning and teaching that have taken place between parties in different parts of the world. Theoretically, the paper is based on a postcolonial framework, highlighting the continuing influence of colonialism and Eurocentric ways of reasoning inside as well as outside the classroom in today’s society. One of the main conclusions of the paper is that in the process of transferring knowledge, there is a risk that the history of modern Europe will be sanctioned as the historical trajectory for the rest of the world to follow, with the accompanying supposition that this can only be made possible by extending a helping hand to the Other.

The thrust of this essay is to study how interculturality, as a path to decolonization, is being articulated and understood among indigenous alliances in the Andean region of Latin America. Empirically, the analysis is based upon interviews with students and teachers from local academic courses on interculturality in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Although interculturality and intercultural education are common features also in Western educational rhetoric, the imposition to learn from indigenous movements have failed to attract any substantial interest in the West (cf. Deere & Leon 2003; Patrinos 2000). To illustrate this further, Robert Young (2012) argues that indigenous struggles seldom are regarded as a central issue even within postcolonial studies, a disjunction related to the use among indigenous movements of paradigms not easily translated to the Western theories and presuppositions commonly used in this scholarship (Young 2012). Given this picture, there are strong reasons for engaging seriously in a discussion about the proposition for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernity, progress, salvation – as it lingers on in official memory; and there are also good reasons to problematize the universalizing claims that have characterized Western philosophy in the implicitly assumed epistemological hierarchies.

In this paper, I will focus specifically on visions of decolonization in terms of retrieved languages, reinscribed histories, production of knowledge; beginning the essay with an elaboration of the logic of domination as rooted in the modern/colonial world – here referred to as coloniality. Shortly thereafter, with reference points drawn from the work of Walter Mignolo and his notion of delinking, I introduce the theoretical backdrop that guides my analysis. In the major part of the paper, I develop an argument for interculturality to be understood as inter-epistemic based on knowledge produced beyond the discursive order of Western educational systems.

The award-winning Johan Vilde comicseries deals with what has been referred to as a concealed part of Swedish history – namely Sweden’s involvement in the slave trade during the seventeenth century. The protagonist is a cabin boy on a Swedish merchant ship who is forced to escape after being accused of mutiny. After jumping ship, he floats ashore in Cabo Corso – located in modern-day Ghana – where he is eventually adopted by a local clan and grows up in an African kingdom. From there, he will go on to witness the harshness and brutality of the slave trade with his own eyes. Comprising four albums published between 1977 and 1982, the comic aligns itself with, and is a prime popular cultural example of, what can be classified in broad terms as a wave of international solidarity movements in Sweden. What this essay discusses is how the anti-colonial and anti-capitalist underpinnings of the Johan Vilde series rekindle a much older Romanticist position. This essay will argue that this well-intended ethically dimension of attempting to subvert the imperially established border between civilisation and where the wild things roam also relies on a position produced by colonial discourse.

During the last few years, the European Union has put an increased focus on culture as a phenomenon both within and outside of the Community. In 2007 the European Commission published its first policy on culture and this document informs that globalization has increased the contact and exposure of other cultures around the world and, consequently, questions about “Europe’s identity and its ability to ensure intercultural, cohesive societies” (CEC 2007: 2) has emerged. Thus, the purpose of the agenda is to use the growing awareness about the EU’s “unique role to play in promoting its cultural richness and diversity, both within Europe and world-wide” (CEC 2007: 3). The acknowledged main instrument is the intercultural dialogue, a term that has become almost a prestige word and its presence in policy document of the European Union has been growing at an exponential rate, according to some scholars (cf. Dewey 2008). An arena where the intercultural dialogue is encouraged is education because these “institutions play an important role in fostering intercultural dialogue, through their education programmes, as actors in broader society and as sites where the intercultural dialogue is put in practice” (CEC 2008: 31).

My overarching objective of this paper is to map and analyse the discourse of the “intercultural dialogue” as it evolves in EU policies. The reason for doing this is that the importance of the intercultural dialogue when dealing with other countries and regions outside of the Union is emphasised. Within such rhetoric there is an idea that other countries and regions may benefit the European legacy. This could from a postcolonial perspective be seen as interlinked with a colonial legacy, where something is promoted to someone who has experience of being subjected by the very same product. The reason why this is even a possibility in the first place is due to Colonialism, since without it the “language links” between Europe and the rest of the World would not have existed.

Thus, in this paper I will develop a postcolonial perspective, drawing on scholars such as Edward W. Said (1978, 1993), Anibal Quijano (2000, 2007) and Stuart Hall (1997), on those ingredients, definitions and meaning that are attached to the intercultural dialogue in EU policy documents. The purpose of the chosen theory is to investigate how ideas of Europe’s colonial past are part of the discourse of the intercultural dialogue. Through this it can be possible to conclude that the world system is asymmetrical structured as centre-periphery, where the others opposed to Europe are marginalised to its outer edges.

This paper scrutinizes how the discourse on interculturalism unfolds in the rapidly growing discipline on the subject by analyzing how it is produced in a local context – a university course. Interculturalism refers to interaction between cultures and the importance of fostering and guiding such relations, whereby educational courses on interculturalism becomes the primary instance to fulfill the ambition of governing bodies (e.g. EU, UNSECO) by shaping subjects with desired competences to enact in a culturally diverse world. Based on an empirical material comprised of semi-structured interviews with an ensemble of students who successfully have completed one of these courses on interculturalism, the paper develops a critical interrogation of those core ingredients, meanings and definitions which the students attaches to interculturalism. With interculturalism presupposing cultural diversity, I will illustrate the ambivalent nature of executing cultural boundaries and the risk of appropriating coloniality in the quest to rhetorically legitimize interventions in the name of modernization and social development.

This paper explores the ways in which boundaries of estrangement are produced in the academic literature assigned for courses on interculturality. As the existence of interculturality is dependent on the ascription of content to culture – since the notion, by definition, always involves more than one singular culture – this essay seeks to provide an answer to the question of what this literature, implicitly or otherwise, defines in terms of sameness vis-à-vis otherness, and thereby to chart the conditions for becoming intercultural. This question is especially important because the self in interculturality has to be, in principle, generalizable: it should signify a position available for occupation by anybody with proper training in this approach. Starting from the assumption that different experiences, languages and identities, already intersect and are indeed already intercultural before being subjected to study under the auspices of ‘interculturality’ as an educational topic, the essay goes on to problematize the way in which interculturality tends to construe sameness and difference along national lines and does little to cater for multiple, as opposed to national, or other unified, identities.

The present essay focuses on problematizing the European Union’s claim that interculturaldialogue constitutes an advocated method of talking through cultural boundaries—inside as wellas outside the classroom—based on mutual empathy and non-domination. More precisely, theaim is to analyze who is being constructed as counterparts of the intercultural dialogue throughthe discourse produced by the EU in policies on education, culture and intercultural dialogue.Within the Union, Europeans are portrayed as having an a priori historical existence, whilethe ones excluded from this notion are evoked to demonstrate its difference in comparison to theEuropean one.The results show that subjects not considered as Europeans serve as markers of themulticultural present of the space. Thus, intercultural dialogue seems to consolidate differencesbetween European and Other—the‘We’ and ‘Them’ in the dialogue—rather than, as in line withits purpose, bringing subjects together.

This essay argues that although ThePhantom is an American comic about a superhero of British heritage set in a fictional African country filled with colonial nostalgia, it is a leading example of antiracist politics and anti-apartheid protest literature. Since 1972 the Swedish-based scriptwriters of “Team Fantomen” have regularly supplied officially licensed adventures to the Phantom comics around the world. This essay suggests that this shift in the scripts’ geographical origin also altered the politics of the comic: the Swedish creators added social commentary and political thought to the storylines, as the Phantom was redefined in line with New Left ideology. Southern Africa, with societies benighted by institutionalized racism, is inscribed into the plots, which function to inform the reader about the righteousness and validity of the dominant Swedish foreign-policy doctrine of the time. This essay contends that The Phantom played an important part in shaping Swedish public discourse on apartheid, while also helping to establish Sweden as a leading international antiracist voice.

This essay explores the ways in which boundaries of estrangement are produced in the academic literature assigned for courses on interculturality. As the existence of interculturality is dependent on the ascription of content to culture, since the notion, by definition, always involves more than one singular culture, this essay seeks to provide an answer to the question of what this literature implicitly defines in terms of sameness vis-à-vis otherness and thereby chart the conditions for becoming intercultural. This question is especially important because theself in interculturality has to be, in principle, generalizable: it should be such that it signifies a position available for occupation by anybody with proper training in this approach. Starting from the assumption that different experiences, languages and identities, under the name of culture already intersect, and are contaminated by, one another, and are therefore already intercultural before being subjected to study under the auspices of ‘interculturality’ as an educational topic, the essay goes on toproblematize the way in which interculturality tends to construe sameness and difference along national lines and does little to cater for multiple, as opposed to national, or other unified, identities.

The Phantom, an American comic about a superhero of British heritage set in a fictional African country, is held in highest esteem elsewhere, regarded as a national institution in Australia, New Zealand and much of Scandinavia. Since the early 1960s, officially licensed scripts have been produced by the Swedish-based scriptwriters of ‘Team Fantomen’ who today remain the major suppliers of adventures to the Phantom comics around the world. This essay suggests that this shift in the scripts’ geographical origin also altered the politics of the comic: in the hands of Team Fantomen, the masked hero is instilled with political doctrines reflected in Swedish foreign policy during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This ideological shift means that the masked hero moves away from the role of colonialist fantasy prevalent in the American scripts to become a supporter of decolonization, social justice, and equality. The Phantom becomes an avatar of democratic socialist ideology, the episodes offering a direct commentary on Sweden’s perception of its own role in the world as a leading proponent of international solidarity.

Interculturality is a notion that has come to dominate the debate on cultural diversity among supranational bodies such as the European Union and UNESCO in recent years. The EU goes so far as to identify interculturality as a key cultural and linguistic characteristic of a union which, it argues, acts as an inspiration to other parts of the world. At the same time, the very notion of interculturality is a core component of indigenous movements in the Andean region of Latin America in their struggles for decolonization. Every bit as contingent as any other concept, it is apparent that several translations of interculturality are simultaneously in play. Through interviews with students and teachers in a course on interculturality run by indigenous alliances, my aim in this essay is to study how the notion is translated in the socio-political context of the Andes. With reference points drawn from the works of Walter Mignolo and the concept of delinking, I will engage in a discussion about the potential for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernization, progress, salvation – that lingers on in official memory. Engagement in such an interchange of experiences, memories and significations provides not only recognition of other forms of subjectivity, knowledge systems and visions of the future but also a possible contribution to an understanding of how any attempt to invoke a universal reach for interculturality, as in the case of the EU and UNESCO, risks echoing the imperial order that the notion in another context attempts to overcome.

Historically the majority society in Sweden has categorized minority groups out of different inconsistent characteristics. It can be out ethnical or cultural belonging but sometimes it is out of religious believes and the point of departure for those categories can only be understood out of a historical perspective. Examples of those historically well established patterns of categorizations are Romans and Muslims. In the group of Romans there might be several different religions represented, and in the Muslim group there might be several ethnical belongings represented. The categories, Romans and Muslim, are historically often used to distinct people from a belonging to the majority in Sweden which has an excluding effect as it separates us from them. As an answer to this excluding or marginalizing process, the groups themselves have organised their activities within groups of associations. Those associations have served several purposes depending on the specific group of interest, such as education, culture issues, or building up communities of fellowship. From one perspective those associations can be seen as segregated groups which run the risk to strengthen the marginalization for their participants. But the associations themselves argue that they instead have a crucial role for the integration of marginalized categories of citizens, on both a group and an individual level. In this paper we discuss associations which origin from two minority groups (Muslims and Romanise) with a theoretical frame of social pedagogic. They are built upon different categories, ethnicity and religion, but participants themselves says that the need for their associations origin from experiences of exclusion and marginalization from the majority society as well as needs for social cohesion within the groups. The aim is to develop knowledge and discuss the associations own purposes where the dichotomy between adaptation and mobilisation are of certain interest, and moreover, adaptation or mobilisation, to what? Such a question entails a discussion about the relations between minority groups and the majority society. One core question is – how can this kind of associations be understood from a social pedagogical perspective? Is it a place where the groups can experience community or a place where knowledge, traditions and values can be transferred from one generation to another? Or is it more platforms for mobilization and consciousness awareness about the relation to the majority society, where the relations itself are seen as having a great impact on everyday life? The empirical data derives from interviews with stakeholders from the associations and observations of group activities. Theories about participation and communities form the base for our analyses and understandings about the associations own work with issues like education, fosterage, commitment and mobilisation. We also lean on theories about multi-culturally politics of identity to analyse the associations’ relation and position to the surrounding society. The expectations are that the results will show which meaning the associations have for the minority group’s inclusion and relation to the majority society where the question of us and them is significant.

After long periods of military dictatorships, civil wars, and economic instability, Latin America has changed face, and become the foremost region for counter-hegemonic processes. This book seeks to address contemporary paradigms of education and learning in Latin America. Although the production of knowledge in the region has long been subject to imperial designs and disseminated through educational systems, recent interventions – from liberation theology, popular education, and critical literacy to postcolonial critique and decolonial options – have sought to shift the geography of reason.

Over the last decades, several Latin American communities have countered this movement by forming some of the most dynamic and organised forms of resistance: from the landless movements in Brazil to the Zapatistas in the Chiapas region of Mexico, from the indigenous social movements in Bolivia to Venezuela’s Chavistas, to mention but a few. The central question to be addressed is how, in times of historical ruptures, political reconstructions, and epistemic formations, the production of paradigms rooted in ‘other’ logics, cosmologies, and realities may renegotiate and redefine concepts of education, learning, and knowledge. Consequently, this book transcends disciplinary, epistemological, and methodological boundaries in education and learning by engagement with ‘other’ paradigms.

This book explores diverse contemporary paradigms of educational praxis and learning in Latin America, both formal and non-formal. Each contributor offers a unique perspective on the factors which lead to the production of paradigms rooted in ‘other’ logics, cosmologies, and realities, and how these factors may renegotiate and redefine concepts of education, learning, and knowledge. The various chapters provide a road map for scholars, activists, artists, students, organizations, and social movements to help begin to construct learning spaces that seek to engage with a new more horizontal form of participatory democracy.